Open Access Publications from the University of California

Contact Us

Please address general correspondence to jtas.editors [at] gmail.com. If you would like to receive an email alert when new issues appear, please send an empty email with the subject line "subscribe" to the above address.

If you have a recent or forthcoming publication in the field of Transnational American Studies that is appropriate for the journal's Forward section, which presents a curated selection with excerpts of current scholarship, please send details in an email with the subject line FW Inquiry to jtas.editors@gmail.com.

If you would like to review a book (published within the last 2 years) or exhibition in the field of transnational American studies, please send a brief query to our Reviews Editor, Hsuan Hsu (hsuanLhsu@gmail.com).

Postal address:
American Cultures and Global Contexts Center
UC Santa Barbara
Mail Code 3170
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3170

Deadline approaching! Fishkin Prize 2026

The Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies is adjudicated by the American Studies Association (ASA)'s International Committee and awarded for published work from the last three years. Apply by Friday, July 3rd, 2026. Download details here .

Congratulations to LSU and Bridget Bennett (Leeds University)

Bridget Bennet's Antislavery in the Dissenting
Atlantic (Louisiana State University Press, 2025)
recognized with the 2025 Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Prize for International Scholarship in
Transnational American Studies

Visit LSU Press

"Thinking with and beyond 'Vietnam'"

In the JTAS Special Forum “Thinking with and beyond 'Vietnam'” (ed. Karín Aguilar-San Juan and Christina Hughes), “Vietnam” signals both the War and much more—it is also an era; a culture and a counter-culture; and a diverse community of people. As a reference to the War, “Vietnam” bleeds through and around boundaries of nation, particularly as the war waged in Vietnam also conscripted a number of nearby states, territories, peoples, and postcolonial realities into its imperial machinery. As a “people,” “Vietnam” represents a contingent geopolitical-historical formation whose subjects across time have shared kinship, intimacy, and intergenerational bonds spanning imperial-state demarcations. While transnational in method, this Special Forum does not disdain or reject aspects of scholarship rooted in Critical Refugee Studies or Critical Ethnic Studies, particularly those that over the past fifty years have been frequently distorted, usurped, or silenced. We intend to center “Indigenous,” “minority,” and “refugee” discourses in this Special Forum even as we make an effort to disavow the state apparatuses that define and construct these categories precisely for the purposes of surveillance, exclusion, and extraction. Read the introduction here.

New from University of Chicago Press

Find out more here

UChicago

Forthcoming: JTAS Special Forum on Asian American Racialization and the Circulation of Asian Religio-Philosophy

How and under what circumstances do Asian ideas and bodies travel to and in the Americas? How are ideas and bodies abstracted from one another and reified into American ideals of non/conformism, and what are the political stakes of restoring their relations?

Editors Bowen Du and Varun Rangaswamy’s JTAS Special Forum explores the transpacific and transimperial contexts in which Asian thought circulates. Scheduled for 2026, Vol. 17, no. 1. Archived CFP here.

New 2025 issue, 16.2

This issue is a deep dive into the legacies of the political-geographical formation “Vietnam,” with contributions by Karín AguilarSan-Juan, Heidi Amin-Hong, Keva X. Bui, Long T. Bui, Christina Hughes, FrankJoyce, Khoi Nguyen, Ly Thuy Nguyen, Kong Pheng Pha, and Ma Vang in the Special Forum Thinking With and Beyond “Vietnam”: 50 Years after the US Wars in Southeast Asia, edited by Karín Aguilar San-Juan and Christina Hughes. As well, there are individual articles by Kodai Abe, Felicia Bevel, and Ezekiel Stear exploring interimperial relations, the role of songs in the adaptation of white supremacy to new geographies, and the promise and limitations of online archives and activities for Nahuatl language-learning and Nahua cultural preservation. Reprise Editor Brian Russell Roberts responds to Werner Sollors’s provocation to Americanists to respond to the polyphonic US landscape in an essay on the Indonesian reception of Edgar Allan Poe in translation, alongside pairs of non-English American short stories by Ester del Toro, Horacio Quiroga, and Mochtar Lubis, translated by A N S, Jonathan Alba Cutler, Washington C Pearce, and Brian Russell Roberts. Starting with this issue, JTAS offers a new book review section edited by Hsuan L. Hsu and featuring reviews by James Nisbet, Mariko Whitenack, and Katherine Zien reviewing Box 25 by Julie Greene, Arid Empire by Natalie Koch, and Settler Imperialism by Juliet Nebolon.

New from Princeton University Press in 2024

Find out more here.

Objects

Vinh Nguyen wins Fishkin Prize

The Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies recognizes important work of social, political and cultural relevance for Americanists undertaken by scholars based outside the United States. We're honoured to present an excerpt from Vinh Nguyen’s profoundly contemporary Lived Refuge: Gratitude, Resentment, Resilience in the Fall 2024 issue of JTAS that you can read here.

Dr Nguyen

Appearing soon in JTAS: Cold War 2.0 and Transnational American Studies

Yuan Shu is editing a JTAS Special Forum on Cold War, theorized in terms of the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Transpacific and in relation to both the West and the Global South as a site of resistance, negotiation, and appropriation. Following the "Pivot back to Asia" under Obama and the inauguration of "America's Pacific Century in 2011," the Cold War has evolved in new directions in the face of China's rise and the shifting dynamics of the so-called Indo-Pacific region. With the 2020 proclamation on "Communist China and the Free World's Future" and the escalation of trade wars under both Trump and Biden, this special forum aims to investigate questions such as whether, if Cold War 2.0 reflects a systemic crisis of the US-centered global order, it equally points to the possible rise of the Global South. Why and how has it been embedded in what Bruce Cumings describes as "the twain of American global strategies," which has paired "an Atlantic-facing internationalism" with "a Pacific-facing expansionism"? The call for papers is now closed but you can download the CFP here.

Molecular Intimacies of Empire

JTAS Special Forum
Edited by Hsuan L. Hsu
and David J. Vázquez

This special forum on The Molecular Intimacies of Empire seeks to deepen intellectual connections between New Materialist scholarship (including in environmental humanities, Science and Technology Studies, and material feminism) and Transnational American Studies by attending to US neo/imperialism's reliance on racialized and uneven molecular intimacies. Essays by Suzanne Bost, Marcel Brousseau, Athia N. Choudhury, Amber Hickey, Rachel Lee, Zaynab Quadri, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Theresa Ventura, plus "The Materials of Art and the Legacies of Colonization: A Conversation with Beatrice Glow and Sandy Rodriguez," by Hsuan L. Hsu and David J. Vázquez. Read the editors’ introduction here.

Table of Contents to download: here Jump to issue: here

Looking back on the 2020 Global Uprisings

New work in JTAS
We are proud to publish a new essay by Kevin K. Gaines, "Reflections on Ben Okri, Goenawan Mohamad, and the 2020 Global Uprisings," in a special section responding to the year of uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Gaines's essay is accompanied by commentary by Nigerian novelist and poet Ben Okri and Jakarta-based editor and writer Goenawan Mohamad. We are also pleased to present an excerpt courtesy of Rutgers University Press from the Shelley Fisher Fishkin 2020 Prize, this year awarded to Christopher B. Patterson of the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. Finally, as always, the journal is publishing original research by new and established scholars under the editorship of Alfred Hornung:

Jonathan van Harmelen, "Lessons from a Different Shore: The Japanese American Incarceration and Redress Movement Portrayed in Western European Newspapers"
Suzanne Enzerink, "Black Atlantic Currents: Mati Diop's Atlantique and the Field of Transnational American Studies"
Gavin Wilk, "Hasty Departures: The Evacuation of European Citizens at the Outbreak of World War II"

JTAS Vol. 14, No. 2

We’re honored to present an excerpt from Refugee Lifeworlds by the late Y-Dang Troeung, recepient of the Fishkin Prize in 2023 for her book that places Cambodia in narratives of the Cold War in Asia, mapping the entanglement via archives of institutional and familial memory. Forward editor Jennifer Reimer presents the work of Y-Dang Troeung’s and other new work in the field by Markus Heide, Yu Tokunaga, Harilaos Stecopoulos, Brian K. Goodman, and Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Exploring the relevance of Bob Dylan for our times, Reprise editor Brian Russell Roberts commissioned English translations of previously published essays by Yoshiaki Sato, Heinrich Detering, and Ana C. Cara, alongside two essays by Goenawan Mohamad. In our Special Forum on Diagnosing Migrant Experience, editors Mita Banerjee and Davina Höll present a collection of essays that look at how a medical humanities approach can surface new perspectives on migrant lives and vice versa how listening with care to stories of migration can deepen an intersectional understanding of health and illness. New essays by Wilfried Raussert, Alfred Hornung, Davina Höll, Mita Banerjee, andHannah Zaves-Greene. The issue opens with an introduction by editor in chief Alfred Hornung followed by three individual essays by Frank Kelderman, Cassio de Olivera, and Alexandra Glavanakova.

Happy New Reading

Dear Readers, we present a new issue for the New Year, with an introduction by Alfred Hornung (editor in chief) and featuring Global Huck: Mapping the Cultural Work of Translations of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, a JTAS special forum edited by founding editor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Tsuyoshi Ishihara, Ronald Jenn, Holger Kersten, and Selina Lai-Henderson, with contributions by Behnam M. Fomeshi, Ronald Jenn and Véronique Channaut, Hamada Kassam, Winston Kelley, Selina Lai-Henderson, Margarita Marinova, Vera Lúcia Ramos, Miguel Sanz Jim é nez, Seema Sharma, and An-chi Wang. Forward Editor Jennifer A. Reimer and Reprise Editor Brian Russell Roberts bring you new work and selected important previously published work in Transational American Studies, in both cases framed to highlight the relevance for the contemporary moment, with essays, graphic short fiction, and poetry by Timothy James (TJ) Dimacali and John Raymond (JohnRay) Bumanglag, Annie Isabel Fukushima, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Mark McGurl, Timo Müller, Brian Russell Roberts, Silvia Schulteramandl, and Toyo Suyemoto.

New titles in Transnational American Studies from Rutgers University Press

JTAS celebrates Shirley Geok-lin Lim

JTAS is proud to include new work by Anndretta Lyle Wilson and Davorn Sisavath in the Winter 2019 issue, and, something very special, five new poems by Shirley Geok-lin Lim. For this 10th-anniversary edition, we took the opportunity to honor Lim, extraordinary lyric poet, principled activist, compelling scholar, educator, mentor, and JTAS founding editor. Editor-in-Chief Nina Morgan commissioned a Festschrift celebrating The Poetry and Poetics of Shirley Geok-lin Lim, edited by Mohammad A. Quayum, with wise and wonderful essays by BOEYKim Cheng, JoanChiung-huei CHANG, Grace V. S. CHIN, Dennis HASKELL, Walter S.H. LIM, Pauline T. NEWTON, Andrew Hock Soon NG, and Tamara S. WAGNER.

Congratulations to 2020 Receipient of Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize

Dr. Christopher Patterson

JTAS congratulates Dr. Christopher Patterson, 2020 winner of the Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies. Dr. Patterson, who teaches and researches transpacific discourses on literature, queer theory, race, and empire, is Assistant Professor at the Social Justice Institute of the University of British Columbia, Canada. We are excited to offer an excerpt of the awardwinning monograph, reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press. Read the excerpt here or visit Rutgers UP for details about the book.

The Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies

Cover

JTAS congratulates JTAS editors Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung, and Takayuki Tatsumi on the publication of Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies (April 2019) with new essays by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Paul Giles, Emron Esplin, Kevin Gaines, Elizabeth West, Takayuki Tatsumi, Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung, Hsuan L. Hsu and Bryan Yazell, among others.

ISBN: 978-1-13-805890-3 Order here

Congratulations to JTAS authors and JTAS co-founder Takayuki Tatsumi

SAGE India has published a four-volume set of essays entitled Trans-Pacific Cultural Studies, edited by Takayuki Tatsumi and with a foreword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin. JTAS congratulates journal contributors Belinda Kong (JTAS 3.1), Haiming Liu (JTAS 1.1), and Christopher T. Fan (JTAS 6.1) for having their essays chosen for inclusion in this important new publication.

Chinese Railroad Workers Project

Read an excerpt from The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad (Stanford University Press, 2019) in our current Winter/Spring issue of JTAS.

"This landmark volume shines new light on the Chinese railroad workers and their place in cultural memory. The Chinese and the Iron Road illuminates more fully than ever before the interconnected economies of China and the US, how immigration across the Pacific changed both nations, the dynamics of the racism the workers encountered, the conditions under which they labored, and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West."

Abstracts and Table of Contents here

Transnational American Studies: Vol. 11, no. 2 of JTAS

HIGHLIGHTS In their Special Forum on Transnational Nuclear Imperialisms, editors Anaïs Maurer and Rebecca H. Hogue and their contributors map linkages between nuclear futures and older imperial formations while also remaining attentive to Indigenous critiques and environmental racism in the Pacific Islands and mainland USA. Essays by Fiona Amundsen and Sylvia Frain, Aimee Bahng, Kyoko Matsunaga, George Gregory Rozsa, and Jessica A. Schwartz, and introduction by Anaïs Maurer and Rebecca H. Hogue. A symposium on teaching United States history edited by Elaine S. Abelson and Daniel P. Kotzin offers reflections on various ways Thomas Bender's transnationalizing approach to US history has been taken up by five of his former graduate students. Essays by Marc Aronson, John S. Baick, Tracy Neumann, Greg Robinson, and Andie Tucher. Don't miss the excerpts from exciting new publications introduced and contextualized by Jennifer A. Reimer in Forward; and classic excerpts by Brian Russell Roberts in Reprise, asking what the field looks like through a critical geography lens attentive to race. Opening the issue is a vital set of short essays on Covid-19 edited by Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci in response to an idea by Shirley Geok-lin Lim. Essays by Douglas B. Craig, David Goodman, Perin Gürel, and Wen Liu, and an introduction by Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci.

Fishkin Prize for Transnational American Studies 2022

Congratulations to Mahshid Mayar, who was awarded the Fishkin Prize for her monograph published by The University of North Carolina Press, Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire. The International Committee of the ASA praised Mayar's work as “A thoroughgoing and creative critical analysis of childhood, empire, and space [that] not only offers insights into how childhood was figured in relation to U.S. imperial culture, and how children took up the 'cartographies in progress' surrounding them, but also bears more widely on conceptual and methodological questions of space, culture, archive, and subjectivity. Informative, insightful, and beautifully written.” Honorable Mention goes to Dario Fazzi for “Imperial Constraints: Labor and U.S. Military Bases in Italy, 1954-1979,” which was published in Diplomatic History, Volume 45, Issue 3, 2021, and which “offers a rich micro-history of San Vito base, illuminating how diplomatic, military, and labor activity shaped the rise and decline of U.S. military presence. The article properly traces the winding routes of the Italian local labor-U.S. military bases negotiational relationships, historicizing the impact of the economic and the diplomatic on the representation of the 'Yankee' in the local mind, particularly in San Vito dei Normanni and Martina Franca. Fazzi draws on a mix of evidence, including digital documents, to paint an enlivening portrait, the analysis of which has wider implications for understanding the local forms of contestation–often around labor–across the US global military archipelago.”

JTAS wishes you happy reading! Vol. 9, no. 1 is out!

We are excited that the latest issue of the Journal of Transnational American Studies includes work by David Bradley, novelist and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America, as well as by several historians such as Teishan A. Latner on the FBI as unwitting archivist of Cuba-solidarity activism, Westenley Alcenat on the understudied topic of African American emigration in the revolutionary Atlantic, Greg Robinson on the soft power diplomacy of Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as articles by Nir Evron on Israel’s past and future engagements with America as concept and model of liberal thought, Eric D. Larson on how Puerto Rican activists in Boston advanced the cause of independence for Puerto Rico while also lending the struggle in Puerto Rico an American slant, Begoña Simal-González on the aporia of transnational American studies, José Liste-Noya’s exploration of the affiliations between transnationalism and the transglobal imaginary found in the science fiction of Samuel R. Delany, a JTAS special forum on American literature and globalization, as well as excerpts from recent books by Takayuki Tatsumi, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Ana Raquel Minian, and others.

Teaching and Theorizing Transnational American Studies Around the Globe

Call for Papers: Teaching and Theorizing American Studies Around the Globe

What would American Studies look like if the transnational rather than the national were at its center? Since Shelley Fisher Fishkin first challenged us with this question in 2004, scholars in the US and around the globe have redefined the field imaginary, object of study, and methodology of TAS. Transpacific Studies has theorized US empire-building, military intervention, and economic expansion as an extension of the conquest of the Americas but also promoted decolonization and advocated Indigenous epistemologies in the South Pacific and the Asia Pacific. It is time we shift our attention to how such critical articulations play out in our pedagogy and teaching practices around the globe. If American Studies was a Cold War product, how have US government-funded programs, centers, and journals worldwide impacted and continued to impact our teaching? How do we relate critical issues in American Studies such as race, gender, class, citizenship, migration and border-crossing to colleagues and students around the world?

Thank you to all who submitted proposals. Call now closed. Download CFP.

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